South Africans to get biometric authentication for card payments

The Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) has unveiled a new standardised specification to facilitate biometric authentication on payment cards. The organisation is working with Mastercard and Visa to enable a range of biometric solutions for card payments including fingerprint verification and palm, voice, iris and facial biometrics.

“Financial institutions, solution providers and others in the South African payments system can now rely on an interoperable and consistent infrastructure for supporting biometrics,” PASA says. “The architecture Mastercard and Visa have designed enables biometric forms such as fingerprints to be securely accepted by a biometric reader, encrypted and then validated.”

“Through this interoperable biometric verification standard in South Africa, we can connect a complicated web of players who operate with different rules and technologies,” says Mark Elliott, division president for Mastercard South Africa.

“Together, we can drive ubiquity, safety and utility of biometric payments while helping to accelerate the number of smart and secure biometric payment solutions available to consumers on these platforms.”

“As an industry, we are proud to have facilitated the world’s first truly interoperable biometric specification that will unlock the benefits of biometric verification and make it available to an open community in a way that is affordable, reliable and secure,” adds Walter Volker, CEO of PASA.